Prerna Lal

Adventures of a Queer Indo-Fijian

Here is more change you can believe in. Several months after cops in Texas were dealing out citations for not speaking English, the senate in the Georgia legislature felt so inspired that they have now approved a measure that would require residents of Georgia to take their driver’s license exams in English.

The bill passed by a vote of 39-11. That means we have 39 senators in Georgia who are willing to forgo the economic development of the state for the sake of their anti-immigrant lunacy. It’s not like many foreign-born tourists visit Georgia as their prime vacation spot in the United States anyway, and now they have all the more reason to not drive into the state.

Here is the clincher. Proponents say that the measure is an incentive for immigrants living in Georgia to learn English. Concerns about safety on the road seem to be secondary. After all, there are simply no statistics that speaking a language other than English leads to more accidents or that immigrants get into accidents more than citizens of the United States. Actually, given the logic in Georgia, maybe U.S. citizens should be asked to sit for bilingual driving-license testing if studies find that they get into more accidents than immigrants.

In the meantime, if passed into law, the measure would have the effect of encouraging people who do not speak English to not even sit the driving test before taking to the road. And that is supposed to make Georgians feel safer. Welcome to the Deep South.